Solomon Islands
Uepi Island
The reef drops into deep water a short swim from the lodge's beach.
A few fin-kicks off the beach, the reef shelf simply ends and the floor drops away into blue-black open water. Back on the sand, the only footprints are the ones you left this morning.
Uepi sits on the edge of Marovo Lagoon, where the house reef falls into deep water within a short swim of the beach. Six beach houses face it, with more than twenty dive sites reached quickly by boat. Certification, current and weather decide which of them a given day allows. The point at the reef's end draws schooling barracuda, mantas and, in their season, hammerheads. Non-divers snorkel, paddle and walk the island, so a stay is broader than the drop-off Uepi is known for.
Couple
You can swim off the beach onto a wall before breakfast, which is the entire argument for staying somewhere like this.
Family
The house reef puts non-divers and children in the same water as the divers, from the same beach, without needing a boat.
Friends
Twenty-plus sites plus a house reef gives a group of mixed certification somewhere to go each day without splitting up.
- The house reef falls away into deep water within a short swim of the beach.
- Six beach houses, with more than twenty guided dive sites reached from them.
- Uepi and Marovo are long-established diving destinations rather than a new operation.
- Mantas and eagle rays pass Uepi Point, and hammerheads school off the island between May and August.
Uepi’s locally caught fish often arrives as fresh sashimi, with lunch delivered to each bungalow veranda.
Family-style dinners bring together local seafood, island-grown vegetables and seasonal ingredients in the main house.
Agua Azul
Mexico
A staircase of turquoise cascades tumbles through jungle, each pool bluer than the last.
Kisite-Mpunguti Marine Park
Kenya
Coral gardens pulse beneath the dhow route where dolphins live and humpback whales pass.
Çıldır Lake
Turkey
Horse-drawn sleighs cross a frozen lake while fishers haul yellow carp through the ice.
Archipiélago de las Perlas
Panama
The pearl that dazzled a Tudor queen and Elizabeth Taylor was pulled from these waters.
Nendo
Solomon Islands
Money made from red feathers came from here, and the memory of it has not gone.
Savo Island
Solomon Islands
Megapodes bury their eggs in black sand that an active volcano keeps warm from below.
Mount Popomanaseu
Solomon Islands
The country's highest ground, 2,335 metres up through Guadalcanal forest with no trail infrastructure.